Partnerships

The State of North Dakota has made a significant investment in the Theodore Roosevelt Center since 2007. Beginning with the 60^th legislative assembly that year, the state has provided operational funding to create and develop the digital library and the Center’s other initiatives. In addition, the university system’s Core Technology Services manages the archival storage of the documents in the digital library.

“The Theodore Roosevelt Association heartily endorses the digitizing project of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University and eagerly awaits the fruition of this comprehensive archive that will eventually include everything Theodore Roosevelt wrote, received or inspired in the course of his strenuous, busy life.”

Tweed Roosevelt, former CEO

The Theodore Roosevelt Association is a membership-based historical and public service organization dedicated to perpetuating the memory and ideals of Theodore Roosevelt. Since its founding in 1919, the TRA has worked to preserve both the physical and the documentary record of Roosevelt’s life. The organization preserved many of the sites important to TR, including his birthplace and Sagamore Hill. (Both these sites were gifted by the TRA to the National Park Service, which now administers them.) The TRA gathered and preserved the TR papers and films, significantly augmenting the collections at Harvard College Library and at the Library of Congress. The association also underwrote the editing and publication of The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt in the 1950s. For information on current programs and activities or membership, visit http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/.

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation is a non-profit organization that is planning, building, and overseeing operations of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library (TRPL).

The TRPL and the TRC work together closely in many ways, including through an agreement to share digital archival materials.

Those who hold Theodore Roosevelt’s papers and artifacts have been immeasurably generous in making them available for inclusion in the digital library. The Library of Congress, Harvard College Library, and the National Park Service sites dedicated to Roosevelt are among the primary contributors to date. Read more about these and other partners in the digital library at our Collections page.

Where do you find software to manage an immense collection of digital assets, with a wide variety of users and permission levels? The Theodore Roosevelt Center consulted our counterparts at the Thomas Jefferson Library, who introduced us to one of the most important – though most hidden – partners in our work. Elements Forge (formerly IDM USA) provides the software that allows staff members, interns, and volunteers dispersed throughout the country to work on the 165,000 documents we have acquired to date. Eforge is a web-based application that enables us to create, organize, and search collections, control access and permissions, and manage workflows and reporting. EForge also supports our website, maintaining its operation and developing new features.

The Theodore Roosevelt Center’s annual symposium on some theme related to TR’s life has been a banner event since its beginnings in 2006. The North Dakota Humanities Council has provided significant support for speakers’ stipends and travel. This has enabled the Center to attract the top Roosevelt scholars in the nation, and to make their lectures and discussions freely available to the public.

From its foundation in 2012 to its conclusion in 2025, the Theodore Roosevelt Center participated, along with other presidential sites and the Internet2 K20 Initiative, in live interactive presentations to schools throughout the country. Each participating site presented information and resources for students to use in their own research around a presidential theme.

At the genesis of Dickinson State University’s initiative to explore Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy, collaboration with four partners in Medora, North Dakota, was particularly beneficial, and the Theodore Roosevelt Center continues to collaborate in serving the cultural and heritage mission of these organizations.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park preserves and interprets the rugged landscape and strenuous life that TR experienced in the Dakota badlands, and how it helped to shape a conservation policy from which we still benefit today. Former Park Superintendent Valerie Naylor obtained a National Park Service Centennial Challenge Grant to digitize materials at six national parks related to Theodore Roosevelt. She now serves on the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s Board of Advisors.

The Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation preserves the experience of the Little Missouri River badlands, the historic character of Medora, and the values and heritage of Theodore Roosevelt and of the foundation’s founder Harold Schafer. TRMF operates lodging, entertainment, recreation, and services in Theodore Roosevelt’s beloved North Dakota badlands.

The State Historical Society of North Dakota preserves, maintains, and interprets the historic Chateau de Mores. This site memorializes the life and activities of Antoine de Vallombrosa, the Marquis de Mores, who arrived in western North Dakota in the same year as Theodore Roosevelt, 1883. Among the Marquis’ enterprises were a beef packing plant, a stagecoach line, a freighting company, refrigerated railway cars, cattle and sheep raising, land ownership, and a new town which he called Medora, in honor of his wife.

The North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame preserves the history and promotes the culture of North Dakota’s Native American, ranching, and rodeo communities. The Hall of Fame’s Center of Western Heritage & Cultures, a 15,000-square-foot interpretive center in Medora, features permanent and traveling western culture exhibits, a Hall of Honorees, a theater, and archives on the western ranching experience.